Strategic Leverage for Improved Performance of the SOC as a Whole

As described in Transformative Effects on Basic SOC Processes, it might be expected that SOC processes are transformed in an emergent way, driven by practice and experience.

In addition to, but not hindering experience-based transformation, improved performance can also be leveraged in a more strategic manner. The strategic goals may for instance be to enhance a SOC’s interaction with other active agents physically closer to and in direct intervention with the event, and/or to enhance collaboration between a diversity of SOCs.

To frame such a strategic leverage, we will here present

• a strategic perspective, that enables

• a number of strategic foci for leverage of enhanced operation within, between and together with SOCs

Strategic perspective for leverage

The term situational awareness (SA) is pivotal to understanding the overall impact on the SOC processes. [Endsley 1995] defines situation awareness as “the perception of elements in the environment within a volume of time and space, the comprehension of their meaning, and the projection of their status in the near future".

This is consistent with the four basic SOC processes; information collection, analysis, response activation, evaluation and correction, and their interactive nature.

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Situational awareness in dynamic decision making, excerpt from [Endsley 1995]

For our purpose, we need to adapt these concepts to the IMPETUS context in order to describe the potential additional leverage from the IMPETUS solution. This is done by distinguishing between the crisis-as-event, and the crisis-as-process (in and between the SOC environments and other collaborators), with the IMPETUS solution as an intermediary, as illustrated in the figure below.

The motivation for this is twofold:

• To persistently keep in mind the distinction between the real events, and the way they are re-presented by digital tools. Re-presentations are most often useful and sufficient, but never exact, and not seldom poorly contextualized.

• To be aware that the way people collaborate to cope with an event - the crises-as-process - might break down by itself, independent on how the crises plays out it the real world. In case, with potentially fatal consequences for the management of the crises-as-event

By employing this perspective, we will be able to both harvest the advantages from advanced IT tools, without running the implicit risk of fatal breakdown in the collaborative patterns.

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Model for understanding IMPETUS leverage

Strategic foci for leverage

Here, we identify a selection of strategic foci which enable proper reasoning about potential strategic leverage:

• Reinforced appreciation of the Operators' role

• Joint understanding and awareness

• Improved access to data for decision-making used as reinforcement of existing capacities

• Rebalancing SOC-structure and operational patterns to utilise new information pathways

• Changes in communication patterns: common operating language

The IMPETUS solution and associated tools will be be used as illustrative examples.

Reinforced Appreciation of the Operators' Role

Maintained appreciation of operators’ role in current-day operations is crucial for leveraging the full impact of the IMPETUS solution. While it may be tempting to downplay the operators' role when introducing powerful technologies, the very opposite attitude should prevail: how can the tools support and enhance the operators' role?

Operators convey context-appropriate information that can be cascaded to all levels of an organisation to support rapid decision-making. Analytical reasoning provides the foundation for the abstraction of data at multiple levels to convey the right information at the right time and place. The goal of the analytical reasoning is to make a judgement about an issue. Operators often form their judgements under significant time pressure and with limited and conflicting information. Their judgements reflect their best possible understanding of a situation,  including assumptions, supporting evidence, and uncertainties.

The challenges associated with this are so complex and dynamic that they cannot be addressed by individuals working in isolation. Hence, operator scalability plays an important role. Systems such as the IMPETUS solution must support the communication needs of these groups of operators working together across space and time, in high-stress and time-sensitive environments, to make critical decisions. Collaboration may be broadly defined as the interaction among two or more individuals and can encompass a variety of behaviours, including communication, information sharing, coordination, problem solving, and negotiation.

Joint Understanding and Awareness

Situational awareness (SA) comprises individual operator's understanding of what is going on, but is also an aggregate of individual understandings working together. From a crisis management process effectiveness and efficiency standpoint, a harmonised or aligned SA may seem preferable. Such a preference may however overshadow an important issue; is the aligned SA fit for purpose?

The term brittleness addresses a sudden collapse or failure when events push a process up to and beyond its boundaries for handling changing disturbances and variations. Brittleness is therefore a condition that may cause that something apparently stable turns out to be fragile. An overly aligned joint SA might turn out to be fragile if the inherent brittleness is not noticed nor addressed.

We therefore distinguish between the the joint and the aligned SA: The latter may appear functional but may be brittle and turn dysfunctional (fragile) because it lacks the ability to recognise and adjust to small but important deviations in and weak signals from the crises-as-event. A more functional joint SA facilitates swift collaboration but do not suppress individual deviation that might be instrumental for making sense of and raising joint awareness from small deviations in and weak signals from the crisis-as-event.

To avoid brittleness, a joint SA must not become static. In practice, a joint SA is always a matter of negotiation and compromise, and diversity of individual SAs can therefore also be  a source for a more dynamic, adaptable, and functional joint SA in complex environments. This requires a continuous trade-off between effectiveness and efficiency under time constraints, and between diversity and alignment. These trade-offs will be mostly visible in the context of primary SOC operator processes 3 and 4 (activation and correction). 

The IMPETUS solution conveys the potential of improving both individual and joint SA, by providing more information and assistance in decision support. By training and careful development of clear and concise but flexible procedures before and while the IMPETUS solution is incorporated in daily operations, both individual awareness and joint "awareness about awareness-as-process" can be raised. This is an important reason why IMPETUS provides a "green field" for SOC operations, which may be formative and instrumental for the persistent enhancement of SOC operations in complex situations.

Improved Access to Data for Decision-making Used as Reinforcement of Existing Capacities

The IMPETUS solution will contribute with data from many different sources which extends the SOC information space substantially . Moreover, several of these tools employ Artificial Intelligence (AI) for collecting and analysing information. Hence, IMPETUS will convey an increase in both the quality, relevance, and volume of information.

This increase may however have an overwhelming effect on the user/operator. A number of issues are important for IMPETUS solutions having a positive effect on SOC performance, namely

• Manning assessment, including number of tools per user, and division of responsibilities clarified based on authority and set of skills. 

• Appropriate training calibrated to different end users, promoting understanding on how to efficiently use the different tools and how to analyse and understand the platform output, including awareness of limitations and shortcomings of the technology, and the need for human-in-the-loop.

• Clarifications of responsibilities and mandates for correlating and combining the platform output and making decisions based on the findings.

• Awareness of biases in AI tools, and proper organising of human monitoring before decisions/actions are taken based on AI output

That is, given that the established experience and skills of various SOC operators is acknowledged and appreciated as the point of departure, the thorough assessments, and deliberations on the use of the IMPETUS tools will likely reinforce the existing individual capabilities of the SOC operators, and enhance their collaborative capability. While a potential fragility will persistently be embedded in these complex interactions, an important type of insurance will be to ensure that the benefits from practices of using the tools do not erode the operators' deep theoretical or functional understanding of the underlying systems, and the arenas to which decisions and advice are forwarded. This will also be a necessary "premium" for IMPETUS becoming formative for long-term enhancement of resilience of operations in complex situations.

Rebalancing SOC-structure and Operational Patterns to Utilise New Information Pathways

To maintain momentum on the potential improvement from the IMPETUS solution, it may be necessary to redefine the chain of command, information flows and decision patterns.

This will require that key aspects such as information pathways and SOC-structure must be realigned and re-balanced. The added information access from the platform and the new operator role may lead to a different information sharing pattern. This can apply to information sharing between the SOC-operators themselves, as well as sharing with SOC-supervisors, decision makers and external first responders. One can also envision a change to the number of SOCs and the number of operators in the different SOCs. For instance, the IMPETUS solution could be viewed as a digital co-location of SOCs resulting in the need for fewer SOCs.

Due to these changes, it may be necessary to define the chain of command for personnel that are working with the IMPETUS solution. Who is informing who about the findings from the tools? Who makes decisions based on the information? Roles, tasks, and responsibilities in the decision-making process should be defined clearly in the new concepts of operation. It will be necessary to develop training and Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs) to address these changes and formalise the new baselines. Baselines will however always be challenged and must therefore also be robust. The principles for strengthening interaction in distributed organisations are for instance pivotal to the Crew Resource Management (CRM) training procedures.

Changes in Communication Patterns: Common Operating Language

Information flows are implemented through interactive communication patterns and protocols incorporating humans, and will consequently also need to be changed to accommodate changes in information flows. This requires a sociotechnical approach.

Using the IMPETUS solution, it is likely that involvement of personnel across different organisations will change existing communication patterns within the organisations involved. A common terminology and symbology is needed when communicating about platform findings, inputs, outputs, work, and response processes. It is important to consider that both operational SOC personnel and external first responders may be using other platforms and systems that might have different terminology and symbology. Moreover, they might already have their own procedures and protocols for communication during emergency response.

These factors must be considered when making the training programs for the platform. Developing a systematic overview of information elements that are critical to share in different crisis scenarios and striving for terminology harmonisation can help ensure interoperability. However, existing communication processes and practises must be also considered.

Despite that this task may appear merely as a price to be paid, it is also an opportunity to mutually sensitise different users to each other's operational outlook and key aspects. Such mutual sensitivity will be very valuable for the "awareness of awareness" negotiations needed to avoid joint forgetfulness, potentially compromising the joint SA.